Open AccessAberrant splicing and transcription termination caused by P element insertion into the intron of a Drosophila gene.
Author(s) -
Heidi Horowitz,
Celeste A. Berg
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.792
H-Index - 246
eISSN - 1943-2631
pISSN - 0016-6731
DOI - 10.1093/genetics/139.1.327
Subject(s) - biology , p element , transposable element , genetics , drosophila melanogaster , gene , rna splicing , insertional mutagenesis , mutagenesis , intron , mutant , transcription (linguistics) , promoter , untranslated region , drosophilidae , microbiology and biotechnology , rna , gene expression , linguistics , philosophy
Insertional mutagenesis screens using the P[lacZ, rosy+] (PZ) transposable element have provided thousands of mutant lines for analyzing genes of varied function in the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster. As have been observed with other P elements, many of the PZ-induced mutations result from insertion of the P element into the promoter or 5' untranslated regions of the affected gene. We document here a novel mechanism for mutagenesis by this element. We show that sequences present within the element direct aberrant splicing and termination events that produce a mRNA composed of 5' sequences from the mutated gene (in this case, pipsqueak) and 3' sequences from within the P[lacZ, rosy+] element. These truncated RNAs could yield proteins with dominant mutant effects.